About a dozen years ago, new to Texas, I lied down on a floor in a room with busted air conditioning and listened to this Bill Callahan song (about moving to Texas) and it felt like heaven. (From his wonderful album, A River Ain’t Too Much To Love.) The song begins:
I did not become someone different
I did not want to be
but I’m new here
will you show me around?
This song — and this album, for that matter — like all great art, gets deeper and deeper for me over the years. Its lyrics are simple, but they are true, and all of the lines, like children, are my favorites, but today my most favorite line is refrain:
No matter how far
wrong you’ve gone
you can always turn around
And later in the song:
Turn around
Turn around
Turn around
and you may come full circle
and be new here… again.
Just a remarkable piece of music. A song that I would love to have played at my funeral.
Here is Gil-Scott Heron’s cover, from his last album, I’m New Here: